Artists Unite to Triumph over Health Adversity

April 30, 2013

Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley

Episode Description

Christine Bayer, a watercolour, mixed media and acrylic artist, www.christinebayer.com, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001. Jerry Ford, at age 28, had his life severely affected by the onset of multiple sclerosis. With Jerry, her husband, Christine foundedwww.artdetriomphe.org. They explain its work, the various creative arts that it supports and how it supports these. They discuss the ways in which it celebrates triumph over adversity and helps people recognize and understand their innate abilities and make the fullest use of them. They talk about the future of Art de Triomphe, and the challenges that have to be overcome in building interest in its programs and services widely across the geographic communities. They say what they intend to do and would like to see done by others to help people triumph over their adversities, and they share their messages for family caregivers and their family members about triumphing over adversities.

Family Caregivers Unite!

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Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home.
They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney.
And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.

Dr. Gordon Atherley

Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.

Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.